These 62 Songs Should Give My Son A Head Start On Having Awesome Taste In Music

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Ten years from now my son will be 15. If he’s anything like I was, he will be in full-on music discovery mode. He’ll discover the wonder of listening to songs through headphones, and buying albums he feels he probably shouldn’t be listening to. An entire new world will open up through someone (or some band’s) fingertips and lips that he’ll connect with. Songs will shape his opinions and change his mind.

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He’ll be seeking music from 50 years ago and hear feedback dripping from broken tube amps daisy-chained together across an ocean and put down on acetate an eon ago. He’ll feel nervous, scared and energized.

He’ll never bask in the feeling of listening to Busta Rhymes over his Pioneer CD player in his custom blue 1988 Chevy S-10 6-speed. But maybe, just maybe, 20 years from now, on his hyperloop commute to work, he’ll google (or whatever google-equivalent people are using by then) songs from this list. And they’ll become tattooed in his hippocampus; lightbulb memories that he’ll connect to the butterflies his old man had when he pushed send late one night at his iMac — shooting a finely-curated playlist via MySpace to his one-day wife. Or that time his dad “blessed” an open mic at house-party by quietly fumbling his way through Wolf Parade song that would end up endearing him to his future band-mates.

Facebook (via Timehop) shared a Damien Marley song today that I was obsessed with in 2010. And it got me thinking I should put together a list of songs he can build a base of musical knowledge from. Maybe he’ll hate them, maybe he’ll hate me, but I’ll always love these songs and I’ll always love you, Sully.